OBNOXIOUS BEHAVIOR

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

The Magazine occasionally enjoys startling readers with a way-out subject or personality. I suspect you pushed many hot buttons with "Wild Nights" (Dec. 4). The couple featured in that article had as much charm as a leper colony.

I tried justifying their stupid existence by thinking of them as misguided souls, but their behavior was too obnoxious to be written off in a charitable fashion..

Surely your staff could have found deserving "human beings" more representative of our young working people. Please, rearrange your priorities.

- Carl Siegel, Carol Stream

WASTED LIVES

Regarding your cover story on Ms. Vavoom and Derrick: What a waste of space, what a waste of lives. Why should we care about these people who seem to symbolize all that is wrong with the young people of today.

It seems a shame, especially at this time of year, that your magazine couldn't find someone more appropriate to glorify.

- Joan Pickett, Rhinelander, Wis.

GOING SLUMMING

We generally have important programs on our agenda, but once in a while we go "slumming."

At our meeting yesterday, 57 members present, one of the members brought in the Dec. 4 Magazine and passed it around. As secretary of the organization, I was instructed to write to you as follows:

The Magazine STINKS! Why do you have to promote tramps like Ms. Vavoom and publish the article "Wild Nights"?

You show tramps dancing with green hair and torn overalls. We took a poll, and not one of our teenagers dress that way. I guess we have to go slumming into Chicago to check out the idiots who dress like that.

From now on we are going to keep the Tribune Magazine away from our youth so they won't be corrupted.

I had many chuckles while reading Bill Brashler's satirical, "The Itches of Madison County" (Nov. 27).

From his account, the filming of the best seller was purely perfunctory. The author never visited the set, the director rushed through production. Naked stand-in (or may I suggest, "lay-in") bodies were used in the bed scenes. No attempt was made to milk the overhyped text. But then, how to squeeze nourishment from a dry udder?

The author laughs, too, as he cashes his million-dollar checks. Now, if only he possessed one-eighth of Brashler's writing skills and penetrating eye.

- Gertrude Rubin, Chicago

DEFENDING FREEDOM

Chills ran down my spine when I read the letter from the woman who didn't like Callahan's cartoons and stated that "some freedoms are not worth having."

Our country may not be perfect, but it is still the place where oppressed people come to enjoy the freedom she so blithely wants to give away.

- Patricia De Freeuw, Flossmoor

MORE PUZZLE SOLUTIONS

I have another suggestion for Bea Davis (Letters, Oct. 30), who has a problem using a pencil when solving puzzles on the paper now being used in the Magazine.

A sharp, black, china marker shows up very well, and can be erased very cleanly with a soft rubber eraser. Try it! You'll like it!

- Bob Erdmann, Chicago

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